BofA Rolls Out ATMs With Live Teller Video Chat

This next-generation banking solution offering combines the technology and convenience of an ATM with the human touch of a teller.

The new technology gives customers access to a range of services during extended hours to accommodate their daily banking needs. Using the new ATMs, customers can speak with a BofA representative via real-time video for the same experience they would have if they walked up to a teller at one of the bank’s 5,500 retail locations.

ATM with Teller Assist, which will offer bilingual support in both English and Spanish, offers customers many of the services a traditional banking center teller would, including the ability to:

Cash checks for the exact amount, including receiving change

Receive cash withdrawals in a variety of denominations ($1, $5, $20 and $100)

Many consumers have speculated that the new fancy ATMs are part of plot by BofA to surreptitiously outsource traditional teller services to India. Xenophobes can relax. This isn’t the case. BofA’s remote video tellers will be based at call centers in Jacksonville, Florida and Newark, Delaware.

Teller Assist ATMs rolled out this month at a BofA banking center in Boston, with plans to continue rolling them out to banking centers in select U.S. markets throughout 2013.

ATMs with Teller Assist will be installed in banking center, drive-up, and remote locations and teller-assisted transactions will be accessible during extended hours: 7 am to 10 pm on weekdays and 8 am to 5 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, excluding holidays.

“There is a little bit of irony when you think about it in terms of adding a teller after all the push for electronic banking,” said Mark Schwanhausser, director of multichannel financial services at Javelin Strategy & Research, in an interview with the Boston Globe. “What this points to is that customers are comfortable with technology when it works, but sometimes you need some hand holding.”

The new fancy video chat ATMs come from banking tech provider NCR. LowellBank in Massachusetts, with a modest $175 million in assets, was the first to install the NCR APTRA Interactive Teller Machines in New England.

Today banks in 20 states have added NCR’s interactive ATMs, including a small community bank in Indiana that already has 50 in operation.